Spark SC – Student Innovation Hub

One of the organizations on campus that I’m involved in is Spark SC. It’s an entrepreneurship organization that aims to connect students in all different disciplines with a common interest in innovation. We do this by hosting events from an ideathon to a startup career fair, bringing together all kinds of students.

Spark is really an organization unlike any other – by being a part of the organization, you cultivate both hard and soft skills, and a community of diverse people who are likeminded in their passion and ambitions. Spark members keep me motivated and inspired.

State of the Arts – an art fair Spark organizes to to showcase artistic ventures in LA

Within Spark SC, there are a pretty large number of committees, and in the past, I’ve been on dev team, which is a committee that’s geared toward different forms of software development, where I learned the basics of programming in Swift and iOS app building. I’ve also worked on setting up our semesterly Startup Career Fair, which is exactly what it sounds like – a career fair designed to introduce students to the best startups in the LA area. Last semester, I also worked on 1000 Pitches, which is a two-month student-run pitch competition that promotes entrepreneurial thinking on the USC campus, in essence, a pitchathon. I’ve also been on USC Hackers, which is a committee that hosts events like Hack Nights, which are essentially blocks of time where we provide food and coffee and a workspace for CS students to meet other students interested in CS – kind of a series of mini hackathons.

One of the other events Spark does is a Bay Trip open to all of its members – the Bay Trip is where we all go up to the Bay Area and talk with executives at cool tech companies; in the past we’ve seen Square, Uber, Twitter, Tesla, and more!